Poker News Roundup: Effective Giving, Powerfest Dates, PokerGo Studio

This week’s poker news presents another new example of poker and esports being blended together. Before we get to that, we’ll cover a charity initiative and a new mega event that’s right around the corner.

Five Players Join Raising For Effective Giving Campaign

Raising for Effective Giving, a non-profit organization that features poker players who give a percentage of their winnings to a charity, has recruited five online players for the initiative. Up until April 20, those players are going to match every dollar raised during this campaign. The players are “Chappolini,” “donthrnrmepls,” “FmyLife,” “ValueH” and “xx23xx.”

That generous group of givers are going to work with seven charities: the Against Malaria Foundation, Schistosomiasis Control Initiative, GiveDirectly, The Good Food Institute, The Machine Intelligence Research Institute, Clean Air Task Force and, of course, Raising for Effective Giving.

This isn’t the first time that this has happened. In December, Raising for Effective Giving, along with Dan Smith and the Crowley Brothers, raised about $4.3 million for their charities. If you would also like to contribute, you can do so at reg-charity.org/spring-matching-challenge.

Powerfest 2018 Dates Announced

The dates for one of partypoker’s biggest events have been announced. Powerfest 2018 will run from May 6 to 20, which means we’re less than a month away. In total, there will be 366 events on the schedule for the two weeks with 17 trophies up for grabs. The amount of prize money on the table is wild as it is expected to be around $40 million, with a whopping 13 events that will be worth at least a million dollars.

There will be satellite events set up this month, leading up all the way to the start of Powerfest. We don’t have a full schedule just yet but that is expected to be posted on the partypoker website shortly.

This is the second Powerfest to take place so far this year. The first one happened in January, featuring 147 events with $15 million in guaranteed prize money. Since that was such a resounding success, partypoker has decided to up the ante in the spring.

ESP Gaming Partners With Poker Central

ESP Gaming and Poker Central have partnered together for an interesting venture in Las Vegas. They’ve created what will be known as the PokerGO Studio, which is an esports studio that will be located in the Aria Resort and Casino in Las Vegas’ CityCenter. Set to open in May, the space will host live events from the world of esports, including from the Vainglory Premier League.

The studio will be 10,000 square feet and can seat up to 300 people for these events, which seems small when compared to Luxor’s new 30,000-square-foot arena. However, Poker Central is trying to create an intimate live space that will also broadcast the events. These events will be shown on PokerGO with the first episode being a special edition of Poker After Dark on May 16.

We’re seeing a lot of poker and gaming integration with esports as it’s clear that Las Vegas feels new customers can be captured by targeting this crowd. Whether those gamers end up being players at the tables or simply adding foot traffic to the casinos, it’s betting big that they’ll be the next big wave.